


Once There Was a Voice in the Dark

by TheCarrot



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Gen, I was drunk and sad, The Darkness - Freeform, The Force, and I'm sorry, this is all manner of weird
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:20:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24782200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCarrot/pseuds/TheCarrot
Summary: Once there was a voice in the Dark.And once, there was a Boy who heard it.
Kudos: 1





	Once There Was a Voice in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> *tries to add vodka as co-creator*
> 
> What the tags say. I'm drunk and sad and I actually don't care much for Ben Solo but this came out anyways cause I'm channeling his inner dramatic turmoil tonight.
> 
> not beta-ed, probably will delete this later.

Once there was a voice in the Dark.

And once, there was a Boy who heard it. 

The Darkness tells the Boy a story of fire and the blood and the death and no will left to escape- Afterwards, there is awe and quiet.

For you see, stories are simple in their passing, words hewn together in some semblance of order, given life and breath by various thoughts and wisdom and lessons, distorted by opinion and the variety of truth one is aught to or naught to believe. 

‘I wike stories wif happy endinds.’ A boy says once upon a time to the Darkness he’s heard and the Darkness blinks back in a way only the Darkness can. ‘Wif heroes an’ princ’sses and nerf’erders.’

The Darkness doesn’t understand, There Are No Happy Endings. For Nothing Ends. 

The boy merely rolls his shoulders and flies away without care nor thought, imagination already dreaming up starships and missions and lights being swung around in a dance only few in the universe will ever know. The Darkness watches and is immensely pleased though he has no face to show it nor emotions to feel it.

But it is nonetheless.

__

Once, laid out under the night sky the Darkness will tell a story. It will tell the boy about how there was Light in its Darkness and how their voices sang in harmonious unison, in lateral-parallels along the horizon and through the empty sky, without pause in space, timelessly unending.

Until It Ended. 

‘But you said-’ He doesn’t remember what the Darkness said, only that it said something about endings and how they didn’t.

The boy stares at the stars and can’t imagine them ending. They go on for forever and ever, his poppa said so. And the boy knows, for in all his own six years by his momma’s side, the man that makes the Princess smile and wait has flown through all of those many stars above. 

__ 

Everything Always Ends; But Yet It Does Not. The Darkness calls to him. Endings Do Not End You See.

The boy listens to the Darkness and weeps for it. With it. He can hear the screams in his sleep and he can feel the heat of something in his hand that’s broken inside; wet and heavy and breathes in something that makes his tongue stick to the roof of his mouth with liquid iron, shining the colour of sunset.

The quiet lingers in the boys bones after that. Lingers and rings, echoes in his ears that deafen him, that go on and on and on until the silence feels like all he’s ever heard. 

It is an absence, the silence, but not. It contains every sound in the universe but at the same time, none of them at all. 

Tiny hands reach out for the Darkness and the Darkness recoils away like it’s then one who has been burned.

And through the silence the boy hears; 

(Do Not End Me.)

__

Once, the Boy wakes with screams that shatter windows and cries that curl around atoms and particles until every being in the universe is brought to tears along with him in his fear.

His momma picks him up, her eyes wet and braces him. She whispers and sings, begins to tell him a story, trying to calm him back to sleep. Back into the darkness behind his eyes. 

Once, there was a boy, and he saved the world.

The Boy does not want to go to the Darkness.

The Boy does not want to save the world.

__

Once, a boy let a pittin out.

Once, that pittin did not come back.

Just once and he never opened the door by himself again.  
__

Then the boy ages, and his eyes darken and so does his hair and so do his dreams. 

His father is gone longer and longer.

His mother ever present.

The Darkness ever more so. But now it is wary. Beautifully cautious. Cynically careful. 

I Do Not Want To End. It whispers, echoes like oil sitting on the surface of water. 

‘I will not hurt you.’ He promises. ‘You are not something that should end.’ For once the Darkness called out to him, and he turned to it and hurt. ‘There is balance momma says, and we are all part of it.’

‘Even you.’  
__

‘Are you lost?’ A shopkeeper asks him, as the boy stands in the middle of an unfamiliar marketplace with wide eyes and quaking frame.

However the Boy shakes his head, ‘Not yet.’ He replies wondering if that is a truth. ‘Maybe soon, but I'm not sure about that yet. We’ll see.’

The shopkeeper gives him the strangest look just as his momma’s guards come around the corner, brown fur and a worried cry leading towards their wayward charge. 

For it is true, or more precisely, it is a Now Truth. He is not lost. As he has people here to come find him.

For Now They Come. They Will Not Always Come.

The Boy wonders who never came for the Darkness only he can hear. 

__

Darkness waits for him when his eyes close, silent are his dreams but ever present, looming behind him, before him and all encompassing when he asks the universe to listen to him. 

The boy knows the universe well, almost as well as he knows his momma and his poppa and the Darkness. Only, the universe does as he asks of it, his momma and his poppa do not, nor does the Darkness. Especially not the Darkness.

Can I Tell You A Story.

The Universe wavers around him but the boy nods. ‘Does it have a happy ending?’ He’s a little too old now to believe in happy endings, but likes the idea of them nonetheless. 

No. Once, There Was A Boy Who Could Hear The Universe. That Boy Was You. 

‘It is not only the Universe that I hear.’ The Boy says into the wind, voice carried away across stars and planets and into the very lifeblood of the galaxy. 

No. You Hear Me As Well.

The Darkness almost sounds glad and the boy tilts his head to listen. ‘I also hear the Light.’

That Is The Universe. And It Does Not End.

__

Once there was another voice in the Dark.

And once, there was a Boy who heard it too. 

That Is Not My Voice, the Darkness worries.

‘Is it not?’ Dark eyes scour the empty room around him and claws at the Darkness and strains to listen for the Light. Both are harder to hear now. 

Please Come Back To Me.

The Boy does not.

__

Where once there was dreams of a Darkness not worth ending, now there are dreams filled with Promise. With Clarity and Vision and Power. 

This Darkness is not like the other Darkness and the Boy flinches at how much louder this one is.

This Man Is Not Of The Light. Nor Of The Darkness. I Am The Darkness, I Do Not End. I Do Not Know The Ending To This Man.

That gives the Boy pause, and a smile, ‘If this man does not end, then it can only be that he is of the Universe.’ The smile does not fit his face anymore, lines drawn tight around his young eyes that feel ageless in an old vessel. 

__

‘If I follow you, what will happen?’ The Boy asks the other Darkness once.

‘Scars and anguish. Power and an unending shift to the balance.’ It calls out to him. A promise across the Universe. The Darkness shivers and wilts around him and the Boy reaches out, curling The Darkness around him and draws it forth until even he can not tell the difference between the two voices inside him anymore.

Do Not End Me, the Darkness begs disappearing. 

__

Once, there were voices in his head and in ghostly faces all around him, glowing blue and ethereal from distant lines and faces of people he should have known. 

Once upon a time, he would have known them. 

But now they are nothing. Ghosts and ash and empty words, promises that mean nothing but endless verses spoken to the Universe around him. 

‘Do not go that way my child,’ The one with the endless eyes and small braid begs. ‘Do not!’

And

‘Listen to us my child,’ The older one states, robes billowing and kind eyes hurting the longer he watches. ‘Return to us.’

And 

‘Darkness, the Light is not,’ The small one states but does not stop him like the others try to. ‘This Voice, belongs to either does it not.’

Once, the Boy would have sat and listened, now, he turns away with red light clutched tight in his hand, red blood dripping from his hands, warm and wet and cloying in his lungs, between his teeth. 

The Boy hears the Darkness call out to him and it rejoices.

‘You are your own worst enemy my boy,’ The tall one states turning away.

__

Once, A boy looked to the stars and saw an endless vastness.

He looked up and imagined himself flying amongst them, the Universe coiling around him until it exploded in a million different way like fireworks in his vision and exuberance in his soul. 

Only, now, he feels those stars differently. Each one a supernovae ready to explode, to draw him into its centre and send him spiralling out into space dust and debris. Each shard of him moving too fast to be caught, to be held… to be stopped. 

The Boy looks down at his red hands and the bodies strewn around his feet. The Darkness coos in his ear and it feels nothing like it used to but infinitely stronger.

We Will Never End With You By Our Side.

It resonants deep in his chest but the Boy who is no longer a Boy fills that empty chasm with anger and turns towards the new Darkness. 

‘I am more than you.’ He says but doesn’t know what that makes him now.

__

Like all stories, there is a hero and a villain. The Boy used to play as the Hero and The Darkness played the villain. Until when, in a whisper and a fragment ,The Darkness disappeared, replaced by something claiming to be it’s kin, but with no stories of The Light. 

Nothing about the Universe is ever whispered in his ear now.

That Is Because You Ended Me. 

Whispers in his ear, vile words soar around in his veins and all through his blood, landing, unbreakable inside his very chest. From behind a black mask that is nothing more than melded together shrapnel and red. Distorted and broken, millimetres away from broken yet eons closer to fracturing. 

The Darkness is a long forgotten thing. The Universe it spoke of and it’s stories about the Light and the way they had been now nothing more than rote words and empty memories. How it used to float in unilateral parallels along the horizon with them and how the Boy wished too that one day he would be there to witness it.

He would never be granted that wish, for once upon a time, there was a boy, and one day, he became The Darkness. 

__

The Boy does not miss the Light. 

He has not been away from the Universe and has no cause to miss it, even if it feels so endlessly different to anything he’s felt before.

He misses The Darkness. 

Misses it like the woman who once held him as he made the universe cry. Misses it like the way he misses hands picking him up and making him fly through the air of his bedroom instead of tucking him in. Misses it in the way he feels like missing a limb should feel.

The Darkness lashes out at him now, like an Asp in the Jakku sand, like the Pittin he once let out to catch a mouse, pouncing and sinking it’s claws into his mind instead of brushing by him like it did before in it’s haste to the horizon, never to be seen again.

__

‘Am I the villain grandfather?’ The Boy asks to the void of stars beyond his sight. Stars not of the system he currently resides in, but that of another base, from another set of eyes and another one like him. 

Someone like him that the Darkness called out too.

He can feel her and he knows. It was always going to be her. 

I Am Not Your Grandfather. I Am More.

The Darkness now is like leaf rot in a garden. Lingering inside the ivy inside of his veins, crawling like soot and disease to the far reaches of whatever is left inside of him after his nightmares and dark dreams are done with him. The Boy flinches in the daylight, and bemoans the Universe that has abandoned him yet never left his side.

The Universe is foreign to him now. Like The Darkness. 

__

Once there was a pull towards the Light. 

And the Boy did not listen. Closed off his ears and his mind and his heart until finally, the one calling out to him fell. Fell like the one whom he hated because he was deaf to the pleading of the Universe around him. 

Once there was a pull towards the light.

And then there was another one.

And then another one.

And then another and another and so many more that the Boy can not stop listening. 

The Light sounds like the Darkness.

And how he misses that.

__

And then, behind his mask where even the snake in the Darkness can not see him, the Boy smiles at the Princess and her Prince and her Knight. Or perhaps, he muses to himself as he lets himself disappear from her view, her Universe; he is smiling at the Knight, the Dragon and the Nerfherder he heard about once in a story. 

He wonders why stories always start with Once, when they are told so many times. 

Because there was a boy, as there always was, and once, twice the Darkness called out to him.

Until finally he answered.

Until finally he fell.

__

Stories say there once was a boy on the edge of the world. He was tall, fair and hair as dark as the cloak around him. They say he withstood rain and snow and sleet and hail. 

Stories say he stood there and let loose a scream that torn a hole open along the edge before him. They say that Darkness spilled out and that Light escaped inwards and then the sun set beyond the sea and emptiness stood where the boy had been. 

But really, the story is much shorter than that-

__

You Did Not End Me. The Darkness whispers softly, curling around him and The Boy exhales so deeply it feels like he is casting out the entire Universe. Casting out every atom in his body as it floats out of thin arms and towards a horizon with one sun, two suns maybe more. It is an endless expanse of stars he can not wait to fly through. 

‘Yes I did.’ The boy whispers back and this time when he reaches out to the voice in the Darkness, it crawls closer to him. ‘And I was wrong. You are the Darkness, as I am. Born of the Light, unable to see it as anything but responsible for our creation.’

Yes. We Are Born Of The Light.

‘We are the Universe.’

Yes. We Are.

__

Once there was a Boy who cried out into the Universe for the Darkness.

And once, there was a girl who heard him.

And once, there was a girl who stopped him.

But it was okay.

For The Darkness was there.

This Is Not Our Ending. For Nothing Ends.


End file.
